


We're Only Young and Naïve Still

by sevenminutes



Category: Glee
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-20
Updated: 2015-03-20
Packaged: 2018-03-18 17:04:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3577215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sevenminutes/pseuds/sevenminutes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Following their defeat at Nationals, Quinn gets to know Jesse a little better.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We're Only Young and Naïve Still

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this on a whim, but I kind of love it. Missgoalie75 was sick and wanted Jesse + Quinn friendship fic and I wanted her to feel better, so this was totally born out of love. ♥ _Please_ read and tell me what you think! Comments make me ridiculously happy! Title and cut text taken from The Naked and Famous song “Young Blood.” (GO LISTEN TO IT. Or, look up the lyrics. It’s amazing and fantastic and I just feel like it fits this very well.) :D

Santana’s been rambling in Spanish for almost an hour now, and Quinn just needs to get out of there. She needs silence. She tries to go to the boys’ room, but they’re engrossed in some action movie with a car…climbing a building? It’s ridiculous and they all look like they’re in some kind of trance, so she leaves as fast as she came.

That’s how she ends up in the hotel lobby. She’s just looking for some peace; something she hasn’t felt in a very long time.

Through the revolving door she sees a figure in black pacing on the walkway outside the hotel. His head is bent and she can’t make out the expression on his face, but she knows he’s not happy.

“Jesse,” she greets as she stops next to where he’s leaning against the wall of the hotel. One of his designer boots is planted against the wall and his broad shoulders are forcefully loose. She’s seen that stance before, mostly on Puck, and she knows he’s anything but relaxed.

“Grace,” he returns smoothly, bringing the cigarette in his left hand up to his lips.

She’s had a lot of names and labels in her life. Lucy. Fat. Quinn. Slut. Mother. Coward. She supposes that Grace isn’t so bad, and she lets it slide.

“Should you really be smoking?” she asks hesitantly, watching the expression that flickers across his face. It’s more full of anger than she thought possible.

“I shouldn’t have done a lot of things recently. That didn’t stop me,” he shrugs, stomping on the cigarette.

She’s not sure what to say then, because she doesn’t even know Jesse that well. She had a loose connection to him through the clusterfuck that was her love life last year, but they’ve never really had a conversation that went beyond small talk or pleasantries. Now he’s saying things like _that_ that are heavy and full of regret.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers. “I know that had to have been…hard for you to watch.”

“Couldn’t have been easy for you either.” He looks at her with raised eyebrows and a scrutinizing expression.

Quinn thinks about his words for a moment, tipping her head to the side and looking up at the starless sky.

“It wasn’t as hard as it probably should have been,” she concludes finally. She can tell by the way his eyes close that the opposite is true for him. It was way harder than he expected it to be, harder than he wanted it to be.

After a moment of long, not uncomfortable silence, she rubs her upper arms and asks, “Do you have a room here, or…?” Before the question is even completely out of her mouth, he looks over at her with a whole new expression. She knows the next words he says will be _look, you’re a really nice girl, but_ and she rushes to explain herself. “It’s just kind of chilly out here, and I thought we could…keep talking or something?”

She hasn’t had an honest conversation with anyone (not even herself) in a long time, but she feels herself unwinding with him. It’s probably because he’s not invested in her life, they don’t have a history, and he hasn’t been around to see her claw her way back to the top. She doesn’t know, and she finds that very comforting.

Even without actually talking, she finds being with him comforting. She’s not sure why.

“No. I don’t have _anything_ here,” he laughs humorlessly.

She doesn’t know what to say, mostly because she feels exactly the same way.

“Oh.”

 

 

. . .

“You’re all dressed up,” he says suddenly, as if he only just now noticed. Then, the oddest question leaves his lips. “Would you like to come see _Wicked_ with me, Grace?”

She goes completely still, and he has to wonder when was the last time someone was nice to her just because. Being nice isn’t really his forte and inviting her is hardly selfless in this instance, but that doesn’t really matter. He wants to use his tickets (the ones he planned to surprise Rachel with) to try to forget what happened earlier and Quinn is there, all dressed up with no place to be.

“That really doesn’t seem like something you should be doing with me,” she tells him quietly, pulling the headband off her head and tossing it in the nearby trashcan before shaking out her new hair a bit.

Her new, shorter, spunkier haircut suits her and he thinks, based on that alone, she might agree.

“I have the tickets and they really shouldn’t go to waste,” he says with a shrug, avoiding the meaning behind her statement. He doesn’t want to think about Rachel curled up with Finn somewhere, helping him lick his self-inflicted wounds. “If we leave now, we can just barely make it.”

She looks around the street and up at the hotel as if she’s only just now realizing that she doesn’t have any good reason to say no.

“Sure. Why not?”

He pushes off the wall and hails a passing cab with a sharp whistle and a shout.

 

 

. . .

_Wicked_ turns out to be more fun than she expected it would be, even with Jesse critiquing the performances and grumbling about the fact that they couldn’t go back in time and see the original cast. But, she also spends the entire time trying to keep herself from mentioning what Kurt had gushed to her about just earlier that day. Knowing that Rachel had already graced the stage of the very show they were watching would have ruined the experience for Jesse.

“You hungry?” he asks her as they exit the theatre together, Quinn fiddling uncertainly with the playbill in her hands.

“I don’t really want to go back yet,” she admits hesitantly before pulling on the corner of her lip with her perfectly straight and white teeth. She wants to keep herself cocooned in the anonymity of the city for just a little longer. Not forever, but…just a little longer.

“No kidding. Me neither.” He stands there next to her, looking out onto the street for a moment. She’s just about to suggest that they forget about it and just go back and face what’s waiting for them when he hails a cab. Cocking his head toward the open door, he says, “Come on, I know just the place.”

Talking isn’t required with Jesse, and the cab ride is comfortably silent. Quinn feels the weight and pressure of other people’s expectations every single day, but Jesse has none. He’s just here for the same reason she is; having a friend.

 

 

. . .

“You need a nickname, too,” she comments, dunking two of the best fries in New York into a pool of ketchup on the plate between them.

“Do I?” He’s thoroughly amused by her comment, but indulges her. “What were you thinking, Grace?”

She sits back in the booth for a minute, just sipping her soda and staring across at him. To his credit, he doesn’t squirm one bit, but rather he meets her gaze head-on, one eyebrow quirked at her curiously. She’s sure that’s more from a childhood spent on display and less from his passion for the stage, as he would like for everyone to believe, but it’s not like she’ll ever call him on it.

“Clark,” she decides suddenly, almost on a whim. “Classically handsome, fabulously talented, and he lived a fairly dramatic life. Something you can relate to?”

“Gable? What, am I supposed to walk around telling everyone I don’t give a damn?”

He’s kidding, she knows it, but all she does is raise an eyebrow and shrug. She honestly feels like doing the same most days, so who is she to argue with him?

“Clark Gable and Grace Kelly,” he says, testing the words out and letting them roll off his tongue. “I think I like the sound of that.”

She genuinely smiles for the first time in a while and it’s amazing to her, because Jesse’s not leering at her. She knows he’s not imagining her naked, or thinking about what she’d be like in bed. He complimented her and it was because of her _idea_ , not her looks.

She’s not sure anyone other than Coach Sylvester has ever done that, and _that’s_ seriously depressing to think about.

“We’re just as flawless as they were,” she agrees with a haughty grin, lifting her Diet Sprite up to take a sip. “It fits.”

 

 

. . .

Predictably, she gets in trouble when she and Jesse return to the hotel. Schue’s been looking for her and when he finally thinks to call her cell phone, he orders her to get her ass back to the hotel as fast as humanly possible.

Following a tense conversation between her, Jesse and Mr. Schuester, she agrees to check first if she ever leaves the hotel on any future school trips. She knows she’s going to be going back to being watched like a hawk, just like when she was eight months pregnant, but she decides it was worth it. The break with Jesse was just what she needed to feel a little more like herself, whoever that is.

Quinn walks into the girls’ room with Jesse’s jacket over her shoulders and is hit with a million questions at once from almost everyone in the room. Where did you go? Who were you with? Why _Jesse_? What did you do?

The only person not saying a word is Rachel. She’s just staring at the jacket around Quinn’s shoulders and avoiding Jesse’s eyes.

She knows what Rachel thinks they did by the look on her face. Quinn almost hesitates to tell her the truth, because that’s so much worse. Rachel would be able to live with Jesse having sex with Quinn, but sharing _Wicked_? Forget about it.

“H-he took you _where_?”

“To see _Wicked_ ,” she repeats quietly.

Rachel is very noticeably trying not to cry, and Quinn slides the box of tissues over to her. There’s a reason she chose to lock them in the bathroom together. Finn didn’t need to know how deep Rachel’s feelings for Jesse actually went.

It’s sick, she realizes as she helps Rachel make sure none of her mascara is smeared. They were in this exact position a few weeks ago, only it was Quinn who was crying over a boy who didn’t love her enough. If only Rachel knew it was the other way around…Jesse loves her too much.

“I’m not going to tell anyone you still have feelings for him,” Quinn promises. “But, for everyone’s sake, you need to make a choice and stick to it.”

“Are you with Jesse now, or something?” Rachel asks quietly before blowing her nose.

Quinn knows she’s always been Rachel’s biggest fear. Everything about her seems to hurt Rachel, and she considers saying yes just because of what Rachel had done to the team and to Jesse earlier.

“We’re just friends,” Quinn insists firmly.

“Jesse doesn’t have _friends_.”

“Well, maybe he should. Everybody needs at least one friend.” God knows Quinn certainly does…

Rachel, of all people, should understand that, and judging by the way she backs off, she does.

 

 

. . .

“What are you going to do?” she asks quietly as New Directions mills about, waiting for their shuttle to the airport. He’s still here, determined to see them off before he goes to visit his aunt upstate.

Jesse shrugs nonchalantly, but Quinn can see a plan forming in his mind. She doesn’t call him on it because-- She just doesn’t. Quinn understands how convincing he is, how much his charm has helped him in life, and she’s almost positive that he didn’t fail his classes because he’s stupid.

He somehow managed to convince his parents to give him a year off to find himself with an unlimited budget, on the condition that he visits Ohio for one week out of every three months. When she mentioned over their plate of fries that _Mogambo_ was going to be playing at the Lima drive-in theater next month and how perfect that would be, she saw the corners of his eyes crinkle with barely-restrained amusement before he agreed to be in town.

“Do yourself a favor and stay out of their drama. They’ll self-destruct eventually. He doesn’t want the same things.” Not like Jesse does.

“Maybe I want to get involved,” she counters, quietly defiant as she rests her hands on her hips.

“You don’t,” he says, pointedly looking at her new haircut that was supposed to symbolize…whatever.

She really doesn’t want to be involved in any more Finn-centered drama, but that’s not the point. People are always telling her what to do and who to be.

“You should at least say goodbye to her.”

Jesse looks at her like she’s crazy. Rachel is huddled in the corner talking to Finn - in part because Rachel and Finn are the only ones willing to speak to Rachel and Finn - but Quinn can see the glances she’s been sneaking at Jesse.

“I’ll create a distraction. You owe me one, Clark.” Without waiting for him to agree, Quinn is on her way over to Mr. Schue with a story brewing in her pretty blonde head about Finn plotting to stay behind in the city.

 

 

. . .

The distraction she manages to create is better than even she thought it would be and she buys them five solid minutes together.

She watches a myriad of emotions cross Jesse’s face in those five minutes; anger, longing, sadness and love, all present. Rachel is pretending not to notice and continues to interrupt him every chance she gets, her arms crossed firmly across her chest.

When Jesse finally returns to the corner where Quinn is standing alone, he looks resigned.

“He doesn’t want her, not really,” she offers, like that’s any consolation.

He barks out a bitter laugh, shaking his head.

“Like that matters.”

Quinn sees a very confused Finn and Mr. Schuester come back into the room from the hallway where the interrogation took place. Finn is glaring at her, and she knows she can expect a lecture on honesty and letting the past go while they wait for their plane at JFK.

It’s sick, but she’s almost looking forward to it. The more she hears people tell her that, the less it actually matters to her.

“Have a good flight,” he tells her, holding out a hand.

It’s overly formal and, with a grin playing at her lips, she looks at his hand for a moment before just taking a step forward and wrapping her arms around him in a loose hug.

“You could have been a much bigger jerk about this, but you weren’t,” she whispers during the hug with a hint of pride in her voice.

“Yeah, well.” He scratches at the back of his neck after she lets him go, fidgeting under her gaze. “What?”

“That’s very classy of you. Much better than how you’ve handled things in the past,” her tone is halfway proud, with an edge of disapproval.

He gets it, though, and he just rolls his eyes at her, saying, “Go; before I change my mind about you.”

She smiles a brilliant, genuine smile and rolls her eyes before she collects her things.

“Don’t forget about our date,” she reminds him, pointing a commanding finger in his direction even though she knows how cheesy he thinks it is for them to go see a movie starring Grace Kelly and Clark Gable.

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world, Grace.”

 

 

. . .

When Santana slides into the seat next to her, tossing a look at Quinn as if to say that she knows what she is doing and why she’s doing it, she just ignores her. Santana just _thinks_ she knows what’s going on.

No one actually knew what she and Jesse had done. They were all just making assumptions based on the fact that Jesse had a reputation for being a heartbreaker and that she had a baby a year ago.

The feeling of finally having someone that understands her is worth the constant glares from Finn and the uncertain looks from Rachel that she gets all the way back to Ohio.

 

The End

 


End file.
